Focal Elear and Utopia

I can't find the link (me freind's headphone), but I would expect language barrier issues as well. Likely unobtainuam for us Gaijin - but positive indication of what's possible to achieve for enthusiasts.

 

Focal sells $100,000 speakers, so $4k headphones is less than the tax on those speakers. Dealers might throw them in for free when TOLT speakers are purchased. if you are spending $250k on a stereo, what's $4k more for similar, and purchase affirming, headphones?

 

Pittards' leather. Pittards is a leather company, like Coach. They are know for woman's hand bags made from quality leather. According to the Pittards web site, Sennheiser uses Pittards leather too.

 

Elear seems like a very interesting product. Even though I already have several phones that do that "slight-V-with-bass-boost" more or less... I'd bet that sound-sig interests a much bigger segment of headphone-folks than pure neutrality. And it's moderately priced for today's standards (how crazy is that?). It damn shure looks pretty!

 

The Elear does look interesting, looking forward to impressions. My major concern is the supposed 4k dip -> 7k spike from Jude's measurements.

 

I could have sworn Sennheiser used Alcantara?

 

Senn may use both. Pittards list Senn headphones as a customer. It's possible Senn used this leather for some headbands or case covers or something.

 

HD800, yes. They're probably talking about some other model (Momemtum?).


Design seems to be very open, which would mean high Q but the rolloff also seems very gradual and bass distortion relatively low. Either there's something special to the material used on the earcups or the drivers.
Really looking forward to impressions.

Edit: What I really meant:
How do they keep such a gradual bass rolloff and distortion rise with such an open design. Driver is said to have huge xmax.

Another thing that I've been wondering about: Why get rid of the voice coil former to save weight but then the coil has an 80 Ohm impedance. Is the voice coil former really that heavy? Are the weight savings by using thinner wire for the coil (higher resistance) insignificant compared to having no voice coil former? Does the formerless design not allow them to use thin wire?

The small bump in the centre of the diaphragm looks funny. This must be to prevent cone breakup. I wonder how effective it is.

Also would be interesting to find out how thick their diaphragms are.
I doubt that the dome breakup is even anywhere close to the audible range. I think I measured 46kHz for the HD800 driver (with no resonance below that) but I could be wrong.
EDIT: I was wrong. It was 38kHz.

 

Won't be there today. Busy with pre-Father's day time.

 

46kHz for plastic material sounds really high though. The shape of the HD800 diaphragm for sure helps a lot with this but 46kHz sounds way to high to me. One possibility is that the 46kHz one just happens to be efficient radiator while there are a bunch below that aren't efficient radiators. For instance for circular diaphragm, only m=0 modes radiate well ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrations_of_a_circular_membrane ).

As for the small bump in the center of Utopia diaphragm, going by the same illustrations in wiki link above, it's pretty unclear that it would prevent any breakup at all. Sounds to me more like manufacturing related.

On the whole headphone design, it does really look like Focal stuffed a long throw tweeter in a quite open frame and worked out the damping with the pads mostly, quite similar to HD800 design actually. Unfortunately, Focal tweeters (and/or their house sound) have not been to my liking for the longest time so I don't have very high hopes on this one but nice to seen another maker taking a shot at it.

arnaud

 

Anyone go?

 

I've waited a while for someone to come out with a long throw dynamic driver. Can't wait to try one of these on the Krell

 

I dropped by for a bit this morning. f**k the headphones, the Liquid Tungsten prototype was off the charts! Huge soundstage and I could almost see every instrument, as if I could wrap my hands around them. I don't know if Alex has changed it at all since Can Jam, but it was much more impressive to me this time around. Synergy with the H800 was outstanding.

I'm sorry, I haven't been following this thread, so this is just some general impressions of the three Focal headphones I heard briefly today. I have to say up front that I'm not a fan of their speakers at all and after today, I'm not overly excited about their headphones either. Overall, all three, in one word: polite.

The Listen was very light and comfortable and neutral. I listened to these on the small Moon headphone amp and the sound was also small, but nice. Can't complain except that it was not very involving.

The Elear was lusher. The high end seemed recessed if not rolled off, not very dynamic, again, polite and overly smooth. The build quality seemed very good and substantial, yet it wasn't heavy. Also very comfortable. Again, not all that involving. I don't remember what amp I initially listened to these with, but a little later tried them again with the Tungsten and they improved a LOT. In comparison, through the Tungsten, the HD800's sounded a little brittle and very slightly distorted, but they also sounded more alive and hence drew me in more.

The Utopia was very handsome and even nicer looking, the sound signature though was even more laid back, lush and smooooth. Cadillac Limo comes to mind. Both the Elear and Utopia reminded me a little of the Audeze signature, but with more air. I listened to these on a Questyle stack. The leather was very soft and seductive, very rich and comfy.

But again, none of them drew me in and I became impatient with them fairly quickly. Anyway, that was my very subjective experience with them.

 

@abernardi the hero we need! Pretty much what I thought.

First post updated with reliable first impressions

 

Aww shucks....

 

I'd love to hear the Tungsten. I'm such a big fan of Cavalli amplifiers.

 

Take the (also formerless) HD800 coil for example.
It's 42µm thick, 40mm in diameter, consits of 3,5 layers and has a total of 98 windings.
I don't know how high it is but doing a ratio calculation with the 0,6mm airgap it's about 1,6 to 1,7mm.
In classic Sennheiser fashion they use copper coated aluminium wire which usually has a density of 3,6 kg/dm³.

You can now calculate the coils weight.
42µm/4=10,5µm wire diameter.
Wire length is circumference times windings = 3920mm

V=π*0,00525²*3920=0,34mm³
m=3,6mg/mm³*0,34mm³=1,2mg

The 800s coil's weight is round about 1,2 milligram.
A Kapton former with 10µm thickness and 1,7mm height has 3milligrams.

Not sure how accurate these numbers are (probably not much) but the former's mass seems rather significant compared to the coil itself.

I guess they went with thicker wire to give the coil better support since it is rather long.
Micron thick wire flexes very easily, not sure if the laquer could give enough support to hold it together.
They could have reduced that by adding more layers to the coil but that would have increased the mass again while also increasing resistance.

The driver has a very compliant surround and is highly ventilated which increases the load thus lowering and damping the resonant frequency.
It's not a tweeter, it's a fullrange miniature transducer.

 

But having a former also allows to better position coil inside magnetic field, while formerless coil will move out, especially with high Xmax. Its not only about weight..

 

Since we're briefly on the topic on voice-coil formers, I remembered reading the following from the Nighthawk "Measurements" splash page and thought I'd throw it out there (worth a read for those enjoy the subject matter). Forgive me if it goes too far off-topic:

"Common distortion mechanisms directly related to low-frequency performance include: asymmetric airflow venting; voice-coil deformation and voice-coil rocking modes made possible by the absence of a true voice-coil former; and decreasing magnetic-field strength with increasing excursion."

and

"[NightHawk’s] voice-coil is carefully wound on a small cylinder of kraft paper, selected for its combination of low weight and stiffness—perfect for retaining the voice-coil’s shape—enabling productive motion, while preventing adverse flexion. Moreover, the voice-coil is wound at a very specific location on the former, precisely positioned at its zero resting point within the magnetic gap, thus providing the ideal symmetry of motion for the accurate reproduction of high frequencies."

Leads me to think that an appropriately-selected former is generally more important to reducing unwanted distortion and that those benefits would outweigh the assumed costs of weight, if any. Interesting topic with a decent amount of referential support, as per the page.